On 10 September 2026 a Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered judgment in CASE OF LACOTE v. BELGIUM (application no. 17596/23).
On 10 September 2026 a Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered judgment in a case it titles “CASE OF LACOTE v. BELGIUM”, brought against Belgium under application no. 17596/23.
It recorded no violation of Article 6.
The Court states its conclusion as: “No violation of Article 6+6-3-c - Right to a fair trial (Article 6 - Criminal proceedings;Article 6-1 - Fair hearing) (Article 6-3-c - Defence through legal assistance;Article 6-3 - Rights of defence;Article 6 - Right to a fair trial)”
The wording in quotation marks above is the Court's own conclusion, reproduced so that the finding can be checked against the record. It is not this service's summary of the judgment.
The Court's record marks this judgment as carrying one or more separate opinions, meaning at least one judge set out a concurring or dissenting view. Their contents are not reported here.
This record establishes that the Court delivered this judgment on 10 September 2026 and what it recorded as its findings. It does not establish anything about the underlying events beyond what the Court found, it does not report what either party said, and it does not state what follows for Belgium or for anyone else. A Chamber judgment may be referred to the Grand Chamber and is not necessarily the end of the case.
Limits of this brief
Chamber and Grand Chamber judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, in English. Committee judgments are not reported: they apply well-established case-law to repetitive applications and are roughly two thirds of the Court's output by volume, so excluding them is a large omission and is stated here rather than left to be discovered. Decisions on admissibility, communicated cases, advisory opinions and legal summaries are not reported either. Where the Court found a violation on one limb of an article and none on another, that is reported as appearing in both findings; neither half is ever stated without the other. Case names are reproduced as the Court publishes them, including where they name an applicant and where the Court has anonymised one. This service makes no separate anonymisation decision. A judgment establishes what the Court decided on a date. It does not establish anything about the underlying events beyond the Court's own findings, it does not report what either party argued, and a Chamber judgment may still be referred to the Grand Chamber.
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